Thread: Bush Crackdown on Illegal Aliens Stretches Marshals to Limit

Bush Crackdown on Illegal Aliens Stretches Marshals to Limit

By Jeff Bliss

March 12 (Bloomberg) -- Richard Tracy used to help ensure that Southwest Airlines Co. planes stayed on schedule. Nowadays, he's directing traffic of a different sort: a surge of illegal immigrants into the criminal justice system.

Tracy supervises 21 deputy marshals in the federal courthouse in Tucson, Arizona, where they guard a growing number of people facing criminal charges for illegally entering the U.S. ``We are in a pinch every day,'' said Tracy, 43, who tracks his officers' movement with magnets on a white board in the lobby.

Two months after the Bush administration expanded a program to haul undocumented residents off to jail instead of shipping them home, the U.S. Marshals Service is overwhelmed.

The 600 marshals stationed on the border with Mexico are dealing with as many as 6,000 new defendants a month. That's taking them away from other tasks such as capturing escaped prisoners and rounding up sex offenders, according to Justice Department documents obtained by Bloomberg News.

David Gonzales, the head marshal in Arizona, said ``Operation Streamline'' shows how a well-intentioned program to crack down on illegal aliens can be undermined by inadequate funding and the strain it places on all layers of the criminal- justice system.

``You can only stretch people so far,'' Gonzales said.

In January, the Bush administration -- impressed with the program's success near Del Rio, Texas, where it started in 2005 -- began a version of it in Tucson, and plans to bring it to other parts of the border in the next few years.

Support in Congress

Congressional supporters said the program's been so effective that they want to implement it along the entire 1,952- mile border with Mexico, where about 1 million undocumented immigrants are apprehended every year, most to be quickly returned to their native countries.

``The uncontrolled flood of illegal immigrants is unacceptable,'' said Representative John Culberson, a Texas Republican who has fought to increase the program's funding.

Ron Colburn, deputy chief of the Border Patrol, which arrests the immigrants who are later detained by the marshals, said Operation Streamline was designed to work within the limited resources of the criminal-justice system.

``We would probably freeze the entire court system in one day'' if every illegal immigrant was prosecuted, Colburn said. ``It's selective prosecution.''

Desperate for Resources

Yet if Culberson and his allies have their way, the border court and detention system, already overburdened by drug, sex and violent crime cases, will buckle without more resources, defense lawyers say.

The lawyers said the program processes so many defendants so fast -- which is how Operation Streamline got its name -- that some may not get fair trials.

``Things are moving so quickly, somebody may slip between the cracks,'' said Heather Williams, supervisor of the public defender's office in Tucson.

An internal report in January by the Marshals Service said, ``The sheer number of prisoners'' along the border ``makes finding sufficient detention space on a daily basis particularly challenging.''

Operation Streamline's defenders said it's been effective at low cost, requiring only about $4 million in fiscal 2008.

Before the program started, illegal crossers had so little to fear from prosecution that hundreds would walk up to Border Patrol agents daily asking for notices to appear in court, officials said. The immigrants would then fail to show up for the hearings, disappearing into the country's interior.

Crime Fighting

White House spokesman Scott Stanzel said the program is aimed at clamping down on crime, adding that Bush wants to spend $100 million next fiscal year for border anti-crime efforts, including prosecuting illegal crossers. ``That request is supporting the administration's commitment to reduce illegal immigration,'' Stanzel said.

That commitment is played out every day in Del Rio, where convicted immigrants are jailed an average of 30 days before being deported. If caught again, they can be tried as felons.

Now, only a trickle of immigrants hazard the crossing at Del Rio, according to the Border Patrol, which has expanded the program to Laredo, Texas, and Yuma, Arizona.

`Years Away'

In Yuma, arrests dropped 70 percent in the first 12 months after Operation Streamline was expanded there in 2006, as immigrants turned back or looked for other areas to cross, the Border Patrol said. Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff is hiring 5,000 more Border Patrol agents in 2008.

Congress, however, hasn't provided enough resources to process all the people picked up, said Gonzales, Arizona's head marshal.

``We're years away from dealing with the large numbers'' of agents at the border, he said. ``It's a whole system you have to think about.''

In Tucson last week, 50 defendants sat in a courtroom with earphones as an interpreter relayed the charges. They answered the judge's questions in unison until they received sentences ranging from time served to 180 days, depending on whether they had previously attempted to cross.

For the marshals under Tracy, who once helped run Southwest Air's ground operations, cell phones and BlackBerry e-mail devices are as essential as firearms, since they must dash between courtrooms while communicating with each other. Space is at a premium in the courthouse cellblock.

`Crazy in Here'

``It gets kind of crazy in here,'' said Raymond Kondo, assistant chief deputy U.S. marshal in Tucson.

The immigration workload has left the marshals struggling to enforce a law requiring them to go after sex offenders who fail to register with their communities, a Feb. 20 internal report said.

They are ``being forced to balance the apprehension of child predators and sex offenders against the judicial security requirements'' of handling immigrant detainees, the report said.

Border-detention facilities are in danger of overflowing, the report from January said.

``If you don't have'' more court resources, ``you're setting up a very expensive hotel system,'' said Victor Cerda, former chief counsel at Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Budget Battle

The 100 new deputy marshals funded in this year's budget and the 52 positions created in the agency's $933 million proposed budget for fiscal 2009 fall short of the 220 deputies the service wanted for enforcement in 2006.

No funds have been provided for the 500 additional deputies and 125 administrative employees the marshals estimate they need to help round up fugitive sex offenders.

Representative Henry Cuellar, a Texas Democrat and Operation Streamline booster, said the initial flood of cases ebbs when illegal aliens realize the penalties they face.

``The spike goes down after a while,'' Cuellar said.

While Cuellar and Culberson said they're pushing for more funding, money won't be enough without jail space and other resources, said Johnny Sutton, the U.S. attorney for the West Texas district where the program began.

``You can't just wave a magic wand and say it's going to work nationwide,'' he said. ``There are huge obstacles.''

To contact the reporter on this story: Jeff Bliss in Washington at jbliss@bloomberg.net.

Last Updated: March 12, 2008 00:01 EDT


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"The 600 marshals stationed on the border with Mexico are dealing with as many as 6,000 new defendants a month. That's taking them away from other tasks such as capturing escaped prisoners and rounding up sex offenders, according to Justice Department documents obtained by Bloomberg News."


Those are the ones that are caught.

``We would probably freeze the entire court system in one day'' if every illegal immigrant was prosecuted, Colburn said. ``It's selective prosecution.''

Yes it is.....they are getting the worst offenders and the obvious ones. You don't paint a target, shoot your mouth off and then expect to be ignored.

The 600 marshals stationed on the border with Mexico are dealing with as many as 6,000 new defendants a month. That's taking them away from other tasks such as capturing escaped prisoners and rounding up sex offenders, according to Justice Department documents obtained by Bloomberg News

Just goes to show how bad this problem really is. Imagine how many illegal invaders are actually slipping by, undetected by law enforcement.

I suspect that a good wall would reduce this number substantially and would be economically favorable in every aspect.